I just read Davinci Code

[supercomputer]

This is totally unbiased as I never read any of the reviews for this book. I've heard the movie is rotten, but obviously I'll see it anyway.

I haven't read a book in about a year, which is why I never got around to this. I'm going to start reading more, so if you want to suggest something, that'd be good.

***SPOILERS

I was hooked before I opened the cover. The marketing campaign is brilliant and most of that is a credit to Brown who selected such an easy sell to start with. His premise is so simple, and yet not really done in this way before.

Plotting is his strength, and he bounces between the characters at just the right times. The main character, Langdon, was probably the least interesting of the group. He seemed to have no faults and that doesn't make for good development. Silas was probably my favorite.

I never knew where it was going, even though the quest is so obvious, and the ending took me by surprise. (Although the italicized lines we thought were in the heads of the characters were sometimes only there to lead us astray.)

It is certainly not a masterpiece. The puzzles were way too simplistic. (I got about half of them before the cryptologist and the symbologist could.) And the idea that Teabing would involve Langdon and Sophie in the end is kind of preposterous.

Brown's text is logical and unpoetic, but the book has a saving grace: its setting. The Louvre is described in such detail, I felt like I was inside it. The history, the artifacts, etc.

Plus, Brown deserves credit for keeping the integrity of the subject matter. He didn't make up some phony code embedded in the paintings that isn't there in reality.

I'm more familiar with movie ratings so I'll give it [img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img][img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img][img]/images/graemlins/diamond.gif[/img] out of 5.

By the way, I would never want to tackle this book as a screenwriter. It is not cinematic in the least, outside of the setting. The best parts take place in the characters' minds as they solve the puzzle. The best way to make it into a movie would be to include a more personal look into Langdon. That would involve dragging the story out a bit, but it's very hard to make a conflicted hero out of this character. Another option would be to make Sophie the protagonist...but these things would never happen in Hollywood.